Building the normative dimension(s) of a global polity

Globalisation is not what it used to be. Earlier debates over how to read the indicators of economic liberalisation and the impact of technological expansion have now been joined by the increasingly pressing need to explore the social, environmental and political aspects of global change. Earlier discussions emphasised a number of dichotomies within the international political economy – open/closed, state/market and so on. These have proved limited in their ability to inform explanations of change under conditions of globalisation. To these we must now add what we might call the ‘governance from above’, ‘resistance from below’ dichotomy as a popular metaphor for understanding order and change in international relations under conditions of globalisation. But this new binary axis is in many ways as unsatisfactory as those that went before. It too can obscure as much as it reveals in terms of understanding the normative possibilities of reforming globalisation. In this article we wish to suggest that there is perhaps a more useful way of thinking about politics and the changing contours of political life in the contemporary global order. This approach blurs the distinction between governance and resistance by emphasising an ethical take on globalisation

Revenue Sharing and Player Salaries in Major League Baseball

This article analyzes how changes made to the revenue sharing agreement in the 2007 Major League Baseball collective bargaining agreement influenced the salaries of position players and pitchers. The tax rates associated with revenue sharing decreased following ratification of the 2007 agreement. Theoretically, these changes should increase players’ marginal revenue product and, therefore, salaries. Results indicate that position players experienced an increase in salary following the 2007 agreement. Pitchers’ salaries also increased, but by a smaller amount. The effect of the 2007 agreement was different throughout the salary distribution for position players, but uniform throughout the distribution for pitchers

Investigation of Metal and Organic Contaminant Distributions and Sedimentation Rates in Backwater Lakes along the Illinois River

Systematic sub-sampling of sediment cores in sections of uniform thickness is necessary in order to evaluate historic changes in sediment quality, to determine the vertical extent of contamination, and to measure sedimentation rates. With these objectives in mind, fourteen sediment cores were collected during March 2002 using the Illinois State Water Survey vibracorer. Concentrations of metals and total organic carbon were measured using standard techniques. Concentrations of chlorinated pesticides, phenolic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were measured by gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC-MS). The concentrations of chlorinated pesticides, phenolic compounds and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) were below the method detection limit in all sediment samples analyzed. However, there was a wide range in concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) which were detected in all sediment samples. Also, a wide range of metal concentrations was noted in the sediments evaluated. Lower concentrations of metals were found in the upper 0.5 m of sediment but concentrations were elevated at depths ranging from 1.0 m to 1.5 m. Sedimentation rates were estimated using cesium-137 radiometric dating on 14 vibracores. Sedimentation rates range from < 0.1 to 1.9 cm/yr, with an average of 0.9 cm/yr. These rates are comparable to those reported in previous studies.Illinois Sustainable Technology Centerpublished or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Assessing the Impact of Cowpea and Sorghum Research and Extension in Northern Cameroon

Crop Production/Industries, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession, Downloads July 2008 - July 2009: 7,

Evaluation of Proposed Rocket Engines for Earth-to-Orbit Vehicles

The objective is to evaluate recently analyzed rocket engines for advanced Earth-to-orbit vehicles. The engines evaluated are full-flow staged combustion engines and split expander engines, both at mixture ratios at 6 and above with oxygen and hydrogen propellants. The vehicles considered are single-stage and two-stage fully reusable vehicles and the Space Shuttle with liquid rocket boosters. The results indicate that the split expander engine at a mixture ratio of about 7 is competitive with the full-flow staged combustion engine for all three vehicle concepts. A key factor in this result is the capability to increase the chamber pressure for the split expander as the mixture ratio is increased from 6 to 7

Assessing the Impact of Cowpea and Sorghum Research and Extension in Northern Cameroon

Throughout Africa, per capita food production has been declining since the early 1960s. Cameroon has sought to counter this trend by increasing agricultural productivity through research and extension. In order to establish future investment priorities, policy makers need to know if past agricultural research investments have earned sufficient returns to justify continued funding. Further, national experiences need to be compared to see if returns varied across programs, and in cases where they did, explanations need to be sought to discover why these variations exist. To address these issues, data were collected in Cameroon and analyzed in order to estimate the benefits and costs of investments in sorghum and cowpea research and extension in northern Cameroon. Specific data that were needed to construct benefit and cost streams included the following: yields of traditional and introduced technologies, area harvested, adoption rates of technological innovations, prices of both inputs and outputs, climatic factors influencing both the research agenda and the returns to this research, and the costs of research and extension efforts. Focusing on the period 1979-87, the analysis addressed three questions: What were the returns to past investments? What factors explained the estimated returns and any variability in returns between the sorghum and cowpea programs? And how did institutions influence these returns and the distribution of their benefits?food security, food policy, cowpea, sorghum, Crop Production/Industries, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Downloads July 2008 - June 2009: 17, Q16,

Housing outcomes: an assessment of long-term trends

This paper was presented at the conference "Unequal incomes, unequal outcomes? Economic inequality and measures of well-being" as part of session 2, " Affordability of housing for young and poor families." The conference was held at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on May 7, 1999. The authors examine trends in housing outcomes by income group. Orr and Peach indicate that there has been a substantial improvement in the physical adequacy of the housing stock over the past few decades, particularly for households in the lowest income quintile. Neighborhood quality for all income groups has also improved, although sharp differences in quality continue to exist across the groups. In one important respect, however, lower income households are worse off than before - housing costs now absorb a larger share of their income.Housing ; Housing - Finance

Race and Survival Bias in NBA Data

Cross sectional employment data is not random. Workers who survive to a longer level of tenure tend to have a higher level of productivity than those who exit earlier. Wage equations that use cross sectional data could be biased from the over sampling of high productive workers at long levels of tenure. The survival bias that arises in cross sectional data could possibly bias the coefficients in wage equations. This could lead to false positive conclusions concerning the presence of pay discrimination. Using 1989-2008 NBA data we explore the extent of survival bias in wage regressions in a setting in which worker productivity is extremely well documented through a variety of statistical measures. We then examined whether the survival bias affects the conclusions concerning racial pay discrimination. Key Words: NBA, survival bias, pay discrimination

Gas temperature and density measurements based on spectrally resolved Rayleigh-Brillouin scattering

The use of molecular Rayleigh scattering for measurements of gas density and temperature is evaluated. The technique used is based on the measurement of the spectrum of the scattered light, where both temperature and density are determined from the spectral shape. Planar imaging of Rayleigh scattering from air using a laser light sheet is evaluated for ambient conditions. The Cramer-Rao lower bounds for the shot-noise limited density and temperature measurement uncertainties are calculated for an ideal optical spectrum analyzer and for a planar mirror Fabry-Perot interferometer used in a static, imaging mode. With this technique, a single image of the Rayleigh scattered light can be analyzed to obtain density (or pressure) and temperature. Experimental results are presented for planar measurements taken in a heated air stream